[Q] backup strategy - G Tablet General

What's a good backup strategy to use with the gtab?
Earlier today I removed sdcard2 without unmounting it and took a stab at installing the android SDK on an unused netbook running Win 7. At some point the gtab started notifying me that the sdcard may need reformatting (it was inaccessible at this point). A power cycle didn't clear things up so I formatted sdcard and lost a bunch of files and two games stopped working. Anyway, that's my tale of woe. Now, how could I lessen the pain?

I always keep a backup of pertinent data on my computer too. I backup monthly with titanium and with clockwork. I then take copies of those off the gtablet and put them on a backup file / rom vault on my computer.
Titanium is worth the money and the process is so so so worth the time.
Sent from my Chromatic Magic using XDA Premium App

Related

Replacement Infuse. Keep apps&data?

So today my replacement infuse came in the mail. I was all giddy until I noticed that on the market, only 3 apps were under the "not installed" section and that was it. I wanted to back up call logs and SMS. Which I got with SMS and call log back up apps and browsed to my SD to save the files.
I really wanted this to be seamless transition. Like when you plug iPhone into iTunes, back up, get a new phone, and restore from iTunes. I was wondering if its possible to do something like that with infuse? If not, what apps should I use? The old infuse is rooted. The new one, obviously, is not. I sold my computer for a car so I can't really do much but use apps and SD card.
Anyone got anything?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
I would suggest picking up Titanium Backup(TB) and using it to backup your user apps. Do not backup system data though. Once you finish, just copy the Titanium Backup folder to your computer and then to the internal memory of the new phone. Obviously you will need to root and reinstall TB on your new phone, but that will make the transition more seamless. I would suggest individually restoring the apps you want with TB rather than mass restoring them all.
The market has a tendency to only track apps that you've purchased and then seems to sporadically remember the others.
Sent from my Infuse using my fingers.
Yeaaah I had TB on the old one already and love it when switching roms. I guess ill have to barrow a friends computer and try that out. Thanks!
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
So as to avoid needing a computer, you could always put it on a micro sd card and transfer it that way. Just toss it on the external sd, then pop the card into your new phone and move the folder to the internal sd.
I've had issues at times transferring between internal and external sd in the same device, but that could just be a bug in the software. Not 100% certain.
Best bet would obviously be just to toss the folder onto the computer then just transfer it from the computer to the new phone. Easy peasy.
Good luck.

Setting up fresh sdcard

Hello everyone...
I have recently switched from crackberry to android, about 6-8 weeks ago...
Since then I have perm-rooted + s-offed, flashed about 10 roms (sometimes the same ROM more than once) etc...
I have noticed that throughout this "learning how to screw things up" period, my sdcard has become nothing short of a train wreck...
I am going to transfer the files I want to keep over to my PC and format my card...
My question is:
Should I format my card via the PC or through the recovery console?
Additionally, should i reserve some space for swap or does android not utilize swap?
Also, should the card be just one large partition or should i break it down into a few different ones (system/personal/etc)?
Thank you all in advamce for your input!
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using xda premium
KrnlPanic said:
Hello everyone...
I have recently switched from crackberry to android, about 6-8 weeks ago...
Since then I have perm-rooted + s-offed, flashed about 10 roms (sometimes the same ROM more than once) etc...
I have noticed that throughout this "learning how to screw things up" period, my sdcard has become nothing short of a train wreck...
I am going to transfer the files I want to keep over to my PC and format my card...
My question is:
Should I format my card via the PC or through the recovery console?
Additionally, should i reserve some space for swap or does android not utilize swap?
Also, should the card be just one large partition or should i break it down into a few different ones (system/personal/etc)?
Thank you all in advamce for your input!
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As long as the main partition is FAT32 you can format it on an old Windows 95 computer.
Recommend formatting in the computer. A usb card reader is the best way, preferred would be one that only does MicroSD and not a multi- card reader.
One large partition is the right answer, don't try to get too creative, you'll end up outsmarting yourself.
At this time, I don't think there are any apps that need creative partitioning of the sdcard to run, so you should be good.
I also recommend that you see about picking up a class 10 MicroSD card, it will make a noticable difference in speed when accessing the card with the phone. (Playing a movie, game with sdcard files, etc...)
Make sure to always properly eject the MicroSD card from the computer before removing it, especially when you plug the phone into the computer. I've already permanently broken 2 MicroSD cards in the MT4GS by removing prematurely.
When flashing a ROM you will stay with for a while, what I like to do is insert the MicroSD card into the computer with a MicroSD reader, format the card, and put only the ROM install file on it.
Then I put it in my powered-off phone, boot to recovery, then flash the ROM.
This let's the ROM create all the files on the SDcard fresh, and helps keep you from having a mess all over the place.
I'm moving the contents of a storage unit today, and not the driver, so I'll check back here and there while we're on the road.
Hope this helps you get started, what operating system are you using on the computer? That may help to give you advice.
Sent from my Bulletproof_Doubleshot using xda premium
Wow as usual Blue6IX...
I am running windows 7, Server 2008 r2 and slackware.
Sent from my Bulletproof_Doubleshot using xda premium
*Thank you for the brilliant ROM Blue6IX
Okay, I haven't moved past windows XP, and i'm moving away from the windows line at this point. I've had some limited experience with win7, but i'm not too interested in investing the time to move forward in that direction.
Besides getting a dedicated MicroSD USB card reader (I have a handful of SanDisk ones) I'd also recommend getting an extra MicroSD card too.
Doesn't have to be big or fast, just a backup.
I carry my phone is a zipper-case that was for a camera. Still slim enough to fit in my pocket nicely, and keeps dirt and dust out of my phone.
It has an outside pocket, and I keep a spare MicroSD card that is freshly formatted, with only the zip for my ROM install and my most recent Clockworkmod backup on it.
I figure this way if something bad happens to my phone in the field, I have an un-corrupted clean "rescue disk" - a rescue MicroSD card.
I can (worst case scenario) power off the phone, put the clean MicroSD card in, then boot to Clockworkmod and either re-flash the ROM itself, or restore my most recent Clockworkmod backup.
(okay, I keep a few other backed-up files on it, like pictures and so forth, but it's an 8 gig card so I have the space)
Something else cool about this practice is it gets you familiar with cycling backups and maintaining a current one. You have to copy the backup to the card, forcing you to stop and deal with it - making you more used to backing up your data and making it a more intuitive process. You also end up with more then one copy of your backup
(usually 3 - one on the phone, one on the memory card, and one on a computer. Bonus points for burning a disk - and I always copy over to a flash drive too)
I'm big on backups, so it's only natural for me but doing something like this is good advice for everyone.
Thank you for the information, Blue... I currently have back ups on my sdcard, a stock Rom on my sdcard as well as my PC and my cloud storage (just in case)...
I think i'll wipe my card today...
Sent from my Bulletproof_Doubleshot
Thanks to the hard work of Roman & Blue6IX
using Tapatalk
Woohoo! Fresh sdcard... Only an 8gb but I am back to 5.6gb free...
The only other question I have, well 2 actually are:
When performing my nandroid back up I get the following message:
"error backing up sd-ext...not found" (something to that extent)
The second question is in terminal, when I do 'df' all my file system block sizes are 4096, my sdcard block size is 32768...
To me it makes sense that my sdcard block size should match my OS block size, no?
(I'm a complete noob so please, correct me where I'm wrong)
Sent from my Bulletproof_Doubleshot
Thanks to the hard work of Roman & Blue6IX
using Tapatalk
Sd-ext is a holdover from "app2sd" - nothing to worry about.
Sent from my Bulletproof_Doubleshot using xda premium
KrnlPanic said:
Woohoo! Fresh sdcard... Only an 8gb but I am back to 5.6gb free...
The only other question I have, well 2 actually are:
When performing my nandroid back up I get the following message:
"error backing up sd-ext...not found" (something to that extent)
The second question is in terminal, when I do 'df' all my file system block sizes are 4096, my sdcard block size is 32768...
To me it makes sense that my sdcard block size should match my OS block size, no?
(I'm a complete noob so please, correct me where I'm wrong)
Sent from my Bulletproof_Doubleshot
Thanks to the hard work of Roman & Blue6IX
using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We don't have A2SD yet, just buggy symlinks between /data/app and /sdcard/.android-secure.
Sent from a message in a bottle.

[Q] Backups

How many Nandroid backups do you keep "just in case?"
I want to balance safety, but not fill my SD Card with stuff I don't need.
Electronics are not infallible. Whatever you have on your card is a copy, from backup(s) on your PC.
I only have 1 copy on a Backup-SD card, usually updated from the last backup. But I have an original backup (and succeeding) version from day 1 on my PC, just in case.
nandroid backups aren't too critical if you backup the individual apps and settings with something like Titanium Backup. I try to get a nandroid every time I apply a new update or ROM however, and then just keep it until I'm sure I don't want to roll back.
I will usually keep the last nandroid on device/memory card, and store the rest like mt4g-cm7.1-backup-2012-02-05.7z. For Titanium Backup I keep on device and will periodically make an archive to snap shot off into cold storage with my old nandroids.
How many....is just a matter of how much space I'm willing to allocate. Which is probably 10-40 gigs for now.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
I use TB and never do a nandroid. Well almost never... My must not lose apps are backed up to the cloud.
Swyped using my Pinky

[Q] Recovering Nandroid backup from LOST.DIR

I recently lost a lot of the data on my external SD card after restoring a CWM 6 backup from the external card. Several folders have had the first letter of their name replaced with μ (mu), the rest capitalized, and contents emptied, others are simply missing. For example "μOWNLOAD." Sadly my clockworkmod folder has become an empty "µLOCKW~1," and I had 3 backups included, most importantly my stock root backup.
I noticed that my LOST.DIR folder had 259 new random number files and is nearly 4 GB, suggesting that the files are stuck in there, but I have no idea how to figure out what is what or even if it is possible to save any of them. I tried the suggestion posted here, but nothing in the clockwork folder was found. I can pick out what I think are the 3 pairs of "system.ext4.tar.a" and "data.ext4.tar.a" files based on them being several megabytes larger than everything else, but I have no idea how to separate them or how to pick out the right "boot.img", "recovery.img", and "cache.ext4.tar.a." I'm assuming that I don't need "cache.ext4.tar,"data.ext4.tar," and "system.ext4.tar," because they all show 0 bytes in the new backup that I made on the internal card.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I might be able to save the backup?
EDIT: Also is it "safer" to keep important things on my internal or external card? I kept all of my backups on the external card specifically to avoid something like this happening during a flash or at some other time, but googling tell me that several people have had seemingly random issues with SD cards and the S3.
From my experience everything in the lost. Dir gets its file extension stripped. I had this happen to my music folder and I had to change all the files to mp3. It may be more of a pain than its worth to change every file back. And because there not all the same type who knows what file is suppose to be what
I would move any data off and reformat the card
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
I had everything of import other than nandroids backed up offsite so the remaining data doesn't matter, and I expect that everything is gone, but no harm in trying.
Also, if you ever need to rename a lot of files at once again, you might want to try File Renamer Basic, it is extremely useful for batch operations like that.
Yea I just used the command line built into windows. I was surprised it had the option to do it. Ever since they stopped basing windows off Dos they got rid of some commands. I thought I was gonna have to get a live version of linux. But if there isn't anything wrong with the current rom I would just make a new backup. Format the card first before you move anything back on it
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
I was having terrible battery drain when first got the phone, took out my SD-Card and now get nearly 5-6 hours screen on time!
I don't know if it was the SD-Card or the new modem/rpm (I'm still on the OTA ICS one)
but for me I use google play and I keep a copy of all my nandroids on my computer for safe keeping. and keep only the ones I need recently on the internal, and I have plenty of space left, so for me it was better to just keep the SD-Card out, it was making it hard to choose to put on sd-card or internal LOL
Maybe I've been lucky, but coming from the Droid 2 the battery life on this seems amazing (CleanROM), I have had the external card in since I bought it however.
I was mainly worried about stability issues, mainly I was always worried that a factory reset or changing roms would affect the internal card, so it would be safer to keep things on the external card.
I'm sorry if i have mistakes in this text . i'm persian . i don't know english well/
I have a solution for this problem:
I've lost my data twice. first time i thought that it is virus so i format my SD card .
this time I LOST some important data therefore i tried to get them back.
I noticed that LOST.DIR is included my data.
I connect my phone to PC (galaxy s4) then i copied all LOST.DIR files in to my PC.
then i opened one of them with windows photo viewer. ( right click -> open -> choose windows photo viwer) then i saw one of me missing photos (luckly).
however it will take a long time to take back all of your missing photos but still you will get it.
(sorry for mistakes)

[Q] Titanium backup showed less current bkp's after...

To be clear from the start, my titanium backup is the paid version and it was set to store all backups on my external SD card. I had been recently manually running the two scheduled programs "Redo backups for modified data" and "Backup new user+system apps & newer versions" over the last couple of weeks. I wiped my phone entirely and using TWRP put on a clean backup of a fresh full firmware flash and did my system all over again since I had removed one too many system apps and "Videos" app was not working correctly and a few others.
Well I got my phone encrypted (not SD card), rooted it, got titanium backup installed and set it to use the SD card instead of internal but when it refreshed I saw many many many apps only had backups as of March... I purposefully ran the two schedules before I did the phone wipe, to ensure that I would have current up-to-date saved data for all apps. I remember scanning down a bit and seeing April 17 for the backup dates. So why did so many backups not appear? I have had a hell of a time setting everything up correctly again, my launcher was disorganized as it was before I set up my phone entirely to my desires. Everything was messed up. A few apps did in fact have current backups. Especially the new apps.
Is there something I am missing about "Redo backups for modified data" and "Backup new user+system apps & newer versions" as to what their function is? Don't those two fuctions ensure that every app both old and new get all backed up and all their data with it? Or do I have to go to batch actions and manually just tell it to do an entire backup of everything and ignore those two features? I am very confused by this and a bit angry since I thought the whole point of those scheduled programs were to ensure you had everything backed up.
Can you help me figure this out?
Thanks.

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